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When the Incidents occured, in terms of Zodiac is was the time of Libra.
Imma quote it:

Quote:

It is pretty unusual for them to express anger, but when they do it is usually a storm.

They are often very psychic, have curious presentiments, and would make very devout spiritualists, theosophists, and occultists.

They have little regard for the value of money.

LIBRA is the zodiac sign of Partnership, these people's nergies are focused on melding and combining with others; they are at their best in personal relationships.

They are often accused of being two faced. Beneath that charming exterior they are very self centered, and insist on getting their own way.

As lovers these people are the most quintessential romantics among the zodiac. Venus ruling, they have an idealistic view of love and togetherness.

Quote:

Well, that part isn't unique to the manga; it's in the VN too. And I don't think the point is that the black witch is actually meant to correspond to Eva specifically; the black witch represents the concept of 'black magic' (people trying to make themselves happy by pushing their pain on to others) itself, and it's implied that Ange only sees this witch as Eva because she is still the person that Ange most associates with that kind of hatred.

In fact, in the VN it's flat out stated that the black witch is not Eva herself. It's just a representation of the destructive hatred of Eva, Kasumi and humanity in general.

I get what you mean, just seemed odd to me that the Black Witch was within Kasumi yet still had the form of Evatrice.
You see, it just kinda made sense to me that she first appeared after Eva solved the Riddle then things going haywire in EP 3.
As in:
Eva solving the Riddle caused the Black Witch to possess people thus causing the deaths of Rosa onwards.
Of course just a speculation:

Kyrie and Rudolf suspected Eva of having solved the Epitaph and took Hideyoshi to question him perhaps even threatening him to tell the location, however he didn't know and they went to kill him.
Would it be too farfetched to say:
Yasu tried to put an end to them resulting in their deaths but Hideyoshi having been killed by them, this being why during the battle Hideyoshi was absent while Leviathan and Belphegor battled them, because he wasn't a target of Yasu.

I get what you mean, just seemed odd to me that the Black Witch was within Kasumi yet still had the form of Evatrice.
You see, it just kinda made sense to me that she first appeared after Eva solved the Riddle then things going haywire in EP 3.
As in:
Eva solving the Riddle caused the Black Witch to possess people thus causing the deaths of Rosa onwards.
Of course just a speculation:

Kyrie and Rudolf suspected Eva of having solved the Epitaph and took Hideyoshi to question him perhaps even threatening him to tell the location, however he didn't know and they went to kill him.
Would it be too farfetched to say:
Yasu tried to put an end to them resulting in their deaths but Hideyoshi having been killed by them, this being why during the battle Hideyoshi was absent while Leviathan and Belphegor battled them, because he wasn't a target of Yasu.

Because I guess that's how Ange sees her.

If Maria had been around the Black Witch would have had proabbly the form of her mother.

Honestly I doubt Eva truly solved the riddle in Ep 3. I think she was handed the solution by Yasu. After all in Our Confession Beato showed the room of the gold to Krauss and Natsuhi. It's possible this time she did it with Eva hiring her as accomplice but something went wrong.

Maybe Rosa saw them and tried to blackmail Eva or something. Eva believes Shannon/Yasu is aiming only to make a game but Yasu doesn't trust Rosa and so with Maria's help she lead her out and kill her. However, when Maria sees her mom is dead she complains and, for fear Maria will tattle things out she's forced to kill her as well.

Kyrie however gets suspicious Eva knows something they don't and think that interrogating Hideyoshi is the easiest way. They lure him out with an excuse then Kyrie takes the gun Hideyoshi was holding (when they left the house it was Hideyoshi and Rudolf who had the guns but later Hideyoshi hands it to Kyrie to carry the things she was supposed to carry), plannning to force an answer out of him. I think there's a huge chance Yasu killed them, possibly in front of Hideyoshi, he complained with her as he too believed it was supposed to be a play and ended up killed by a dying Kyrie either because she believed him to be an accomplice or because he ended up on the fire line between Kyrie and Yasu (it would be the same ending Leviatan met and in the manga it was heavily implied Hideyoshi was shot on his back by Kyrie's gun while he was in front of Eva-Beatrice, while scolding her).
From this moment Eva is starting to doubt things. His agreement with Yasu but also the people on the insland.
It's also possible Eva doesn't know who Yasu was supposed to be, maybe he only talked with her through the phone like Natsuhi does in Ep 5 so, to Eva, everyone can be 'Beato' which would explain why, once George is found dead, Eva doesn't grab Shannon and kills her a second time.

However there's no way to prove who died first, if Hideyoshi or Eva and Kyrie so your explanation is also possible.

It's not that she hadn't thought at the answer, it's that with her knowledge she could find the right answer only out of random luck and not out of reasoning.

I think that is one of the points that goes along with Umineko and is at least what I can draw from it as a creative resource. In terms of riddles you have to know the level of knowledge your opponent possesses in order to create a fair challenge, but reality does not provide fair challenges. That is why I also think that Umineko has a lot more to say about fictionality and literary fairness than commenting on the moral question of these.

In that sense it is largely different from 'An Offering to Nothingness', more on that later though. Ange even says that no matter how many countering truths people create in the end, she will create her own Golden Truth and keep her family with her, she does not condemn the witches in the end, she merely says that she will no longer commit to being their plaything. In the end, she creates as much a 'fantasy' or a fictionalized account of real events as the witches do, only her version is her's and her's alone.

Coming back to fairness. Fiction can be fair, that is correct, but reality will not care for playing fair, providing you with clues and hints. But where "AOtN" flat out denied mystery fiction as a form of entertainment, Umineko goes for the fictionality of everything by claiming that reality is always just a construction from the imperfect knowledge we have of the completeness of existence around us. That is why I enjoyed Chiru just as much as the first four arcs, because it played with that and even took it a step further.

Quote:

For example you've gotten me definitely curious about 'An Offering to Nothingness' but sadly this book hasn't been translated it so I can't really use it to improve my judgement of Umineko.
[...]
Any chance you can further semplificate things for people who can't get such a wide mystery knowledge or is it asking too much?

I wouldn't call my mystery knowledge wide, it's still lacking in several areas, even people who are far more advanced in their research than me still admit that they are merely attempting to built a larger understanding of a genre that might not even be one cohesive genre.
In that context I have to say, I like rules like those of Knox and Van Dine, but I love it even more to dismantle them and understand why exactly they were used, what they meant in their respective context and in the end turn them on their head. In the end the Eiserne Jungfrau does not control reality by forbidding certain elements, they can merely test if the real world allows their rules to exist.

I don't have to find a groundbreaking novelty in a work to find it fascinating. Merely the playing around with elements that are taken for granted might be enough to spark my interest.
In classic mystery fiction the angle of the legend-motive was used by the culprit to spread suspicion into every possible corner and push attention away from him or herself by using a well-known supernatural narrative. In Umineko it rather seems to be that one person (guilty or not) tried to gather all guilt into him/herself to give life to a supernatural tale that did not exist prior to this.

In that way I understand why it is often compared to 'AOtN'. You can read this plot synopsis (part of it was taken from a Japanese blog because I didn't remember all specifics) if you want.

Spoiler for An Offering to Nothingness:

In September 1954, a sailing boat, the Urojijimaru, that operated on the Saikan contact route left during the typhoon No.15 and capsized because of the exposure to storm and rain. Crew and Passengers put together, almost 1100 people lost their lives. Among the victims of the Urojijimaru was the family head of the Hinuma family, Murasaki Jiro and his wife, as well as his younger brother Sumire Saburo and his wife. The Hinuma family owned a jewel store in Tokyo, but it was destroyed in the post-war period, so Murasaki Jiro left on this journey to Hokkaido, where he was involved in this accident, because he wanted to discuss opening a new store with his younger brother and his wife.
In the spring of that year a salaryman called Mitsuda Alim becomes friends with the orphan son of Sumire Saburo, Mizunuma Aiji, in a gay bar in Ryusenji called ARABIQ, which he frequents. Alim learns that the chanson loving Aiji is a big fan of his childhood friend and chanson singer Nanamura Hisao, and introduces the two on the year end party at ARABIQ.
Because he immediately hits it off with Hisao, he confesses to her that after the incident he moved to Hokkaido to the main estate and started living together with the orphans of Murasaki Jiro, the brothers Aoji and Benitsukasa in the Hinuma main mansion in Meguro, where recently strange events have started happening around him. Actually Hisao, who is a big fan of reasoning based mystery fiction, received a letter from her fiancé, Mureta Toshio, who had distant relations to the Hinuma household and recently moved to France, telling her, “Because the house of Hinuma has been piling up the bad karma of the dead for generations, before long the god of death will befall it, I beg of you to stop it somehow.” So Hisao asked of Alim, who is an old school friend of Aoji, to stop by the Hinuma mansion and look for clues.
After several days Alim, who visited the Hinuma mansion in Meguro, told her that Murasaki Jiro had two younger brothers and a younger sister. The middle brother is Sumire Saburo. The youngest brother, Tojiro, was a doctor of Chinese medicine but had lost his practice in a fire caused by faulty wiring shortly after the accident of the Urojijimaru, and currently lodges at the main mansion in Meguro. Tojiro’s wife is separated from him by her age, but as she is in her last months of pregnancy she is interned in a maternity clinic. The air between Benitsukasa and Tojiro is also very thick.
Furthermore, the younger sister of Murasaki Jiro, Akemi, left Tokyo and bore an illegitimate child named Kiji while in Hiroshima. Murasaki Jiro had pity on Kiji because of his poor living conditions and entered him into the family like his own child, but Akemi had to suffer under this because she had to share her part of the inheritance with him, which caused her to break off contact with Murasaki Jiro. In the final days of the war, Akemi died due to the bombing of Hiroshima, and it was deemed unknown whether Kiji was dead or alive.

One night, when Alim is visiting the Hinuma mansion, while Aoji is not present due to a consultation with a real estate agent named Hachida Koukichi about their house, he is introduced to an old man named Fujikita Makoto. The old man Fujikita is a friend of their grandfather and something like an advisor to the house of Hinuma, he has been called by Aoji from Niigata to mediate between Benitsukasa and Tojiro.
After the old Fujikita has heard both the opinion of Benitsukasa and Tojiro, Benitsukasa goes to take a bath, while Alim and Fujikita enjoy a game of chess in Benitsukasa’s room on the sencond floor. But suddenly and old servant, Ginsaku, appears and tells that the door to the bathroom is locked and that Benitsukasa doesn’t answer when called. Alim and Fujikita, Aiji and Tojiro, who had all been on the second floor, head downstairs, break open the bathroom door and enter, where they fiend the body of Benitsukasa stretched out, face down on the floor. On his back they find thin swellings, like a red cross, as if he had been whipped…
When Tojiro takes Benitsukasa’s pulse he immediately informs the others that he is dead. Confused and bewildered Aiji and Alim try to contact Kokichi’s office. Aoji quickly returns home. The attending physician, a professor Mineta, hurries to the site and does an autopsy on the corpse. Benitsukasa had had masochistic tendencies since childhood, so the doctor doubts because of the whip marks, if maybe he had enjoyed being whipped for pleasure while in the bath and then suffered a cardiac arrest and died. Aoji lays out in the open that Benitsukasa also had homosexual tendencies and had as a lover a hooligan with no family history.
If they called the police and let them dissect the corpse in such a situation, it might damage the honor of the Hinuma family, so they all agreed to announce Benitsukasa’s death as a sudden death through illness.
But, upon hearing the details from Alim, Hisao concludes that this was a murder that was made to look like an accident. Also, because Aiji and Fujikita are mystery maniacs as well, though inferior to Hisao, though they agreed to pretend it to be a natural death, they doubted if it wasn’t murder. So a few days later the four, Hisao, Aiji, Fujikita and Alim, meet on the second floor of ARABIQ and engage in a battle of reasoning to reveal the culprit and explain the trick.
After the four people have laid out their four reasonings they come to an agreement that old Fujikita’s theory of Tojiro being the culprit of the Benitsukasa murder is the most realistic and reasonable solution. They search for a chance and Fujikita is fired up to make Tojiro confess the truth…

After Benitsukasa’s funeral all the relatives and friends gather in the mansion in Meguro and get distracted by Hisao into enjoying a party of Mahjong. The participants are Aoji, Aiji, Tojiro, Kokichi and Fujikita. Because they are five one can’t play, so they are playing along that rule that after a full round the winner get’s taken out of the game. Fujikita claims that because of the games psychological elements, he will gain evidence on Tojiro being the true culprit, so he requests Alim to note down all the actions of all five people. Alim takes down several pages worth of data, chronicling all actions taken.
However, during the night Tojiro quits the game and retires to his room on the second floor. While the game is being continued among the remaining four, dawn closes in. This is when Kokichi notices the smell of gas and they confirm that the fire in the water-heater for the second floor went out and gas is leaking out. This happened by Kokichi closing the stopcock for the gas when he was brewing some tea in the kitchen during the night, which made the flame go out, and then Alim opening the stopcock again when he was about to brew some tea, which made gas leak out.
However, the smell of gas is also emanating from Tojiro’s room and he does not answer when called. Because the door is locked from the inside, Alim and Kokichi break down the door, which is how they discover that the room is filled by gas emitted from a gas stove and also the dead body of Tojiro on the bed, who has died inhaling poisonous gas while sleeping.
In the light of all information Tojiro likely entered his room on the second floor, after taking his habitual sleeping pills turned on the gas stove because his room was cold, and fell asleep when in got warm. After this, because of the closing and opening of the stopcock in the kitchen, the flame of the stove went out and gas escaped, which led to Tojiro dying of a gas poisoning.
Both Kokichi and Alim had no clue of Tojiro sleeping like a log with a gas stove turned on on the second floor when turning the stopcock, which is why this is no murder, and can only be called an incidental chain of careless actions that led to an unfortunate accident. Still, they left matters to the police, but once they heard all the information and inspected the site, their final verdict was it being an accident as well.
After Tojiro’s funeral, Alim saw Fujikita off when he returned to Niigata, but in the moment before the train departed the old man whispered into his ear.
“This was full-fledged murder. But even Mee can’t judge if this is truly the working of this human world until the end.”

As if replacing Fujikita, Mureta returned from France and set out to find a resolution to the string of incidents that Hisao and Alim had encountered in the Hinuma household.
Aiji noticed that there was originally no gas stove in Tojiro’s room and thus claimed that this was actually not an accident but a case of murder. Benitsukasa’s SM partner’s name was found written in his diary, a hoodlum named Konosu Genji, so he pointed out that this guy might be the culprit, but this was denied by Mureta. The marks on Benitsukasa’s back were actually not lash marks from a whip, but a skin reaction caused by a very special allergy. But, after the incident involving the Urojijimaru, Benitsukasa had a sudden outbreak of this rash on his back, and for him who was under shock due to loosing his parents as well as uncle and aunt on the same day this felt like an unjustified punishment from above, so what was considered to be marks of a whip during SM play was an escape from reality by enduring this state. His big brother Aoji, who knew of this, was the one who judged it to be preferable for his younger brother to be buried in the image of a pervert who is hung up on SM play.
In the light of the truth that Mureta unveiled, they are convinced that Benitsukasa’s death was no murder after all, but really a sudden detah due to illness. This is how the curtain was lowered on the incident in the Hinuma family…or so it seemed.
After this Konosu Genji, the person who had been ruled out as fictitious turns out to exist when it is revealed that, after killing his parents, he attempted to commit suicide by poisoning himself. So it is decided that the case of the Hinuma family is still not closed. So once again Hisao and Alim set out to unveil the treat and arrive at an unexpected one.

After an intense logic battle the culprit reveals himself to be Aoji. Benitsukasa actually did die a natural death, but in a different place. Aoji constructed the locked room scenario around the corpse. He does confess of killing Tojiro though. He murdered him in the room adjoining the kitchen and then brought him to his room to create another locked room. When asked why, he says it was because everybody expected the tragedy of the Hinuma to go on and created “THE HINUMA MURDERS” in a way to create a “human death” for himself and his family. After his father died while drowning he feared nothing more than “dying like a pig, drowned in the sea”, as his father did.
In the end Hisao points to the readers themselves and accuses them of being just as much of a culprit as she herself, Alim and all other people in connection to the case are. The case existed because people had a thirst for tragedy and horror, without people’s curiosity and perverted taste in the bizarre, cases like this would never come into existence.

But where "AOtN" flat out denied mystery fiction as a form of entertainment, Umineko goes for the fictionality of everything by claiming that reality is always just a construction from the imperfect knowledge we have of the completeness of existence around us.

Ryukishi wrote about this in Higurashi.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ryukishi07

If I said that this is a story that complies with Rule Z of the Higurashi Story, I think those of you who are familiar with it will understand. I think that our daily lives are overflowing with rule Z. We take the statements of people who say only what is convenient for their own interests, interpret them in a way that is convenient for us too, and then act based on that forced understanding.... We cannot look at things objectively. All we can do is... warn ourselves that everything is adapted for the convenience of whoever told us, and strive to look at things with a level head.

So, what is one way of overcoming this Rule Z? We turn the chessboard around.

Let's flip the chessboard around on Ryukishi. What could he be trying to do by not presenting us with a "strong enough" motive by the one who confessed- the one who was supposed to have orchestrated this all?

Could it be that Ryukishi wants us to continue searching then? Want to see what I see? I see discussion for a series which ended two years ago continue on without end. I bet this is exactly what he intended.

I believe there is a truth to what KNM says, when he talks about a difference between a "the official truth" and "the hidden truth" I believe that there is a truth that Ryukishi kept hidden.

Where is the evidence for this? Where in the story is it?

It's in Prime.

It's on the Meta-Level.

The highest Meta-Level there is: our hearts.

The truth lies inside everyone of us. Without love the truth cannot be seen. But how then are we supposed to find the truth?
Let's look at EP2. Their guts, their abdomens, all that was apparently cut open. It was really the culprit's way for looking for the truth inside their hearts. Again, see where Kanon gets staked according to the TIPS? In fact let's look at all the arcs 1-4...He's almost always stabbed in the chest... the heart! Yasu is gouging out his own heart to search for the truth!

This is again echoed in EP7 during the Tea Party. How does Bern find this truth? From gouging out every single piece of Claire's body, and Ange in EP8 tried creating a truth from her own blood.

The answer is literally flowing within our own veins. We are Prime.

Actually, I was going for something a little more serious about the Rule Z thing, but something distracted me and I lost it.

So speaking of prime, a while back the idea of what happened in prime interested me and I decided to see if I could reason it out.

Looking at the Episode 1 tea party the cousins are talking about, what a shame looks like it's a fantasy story when I thought it would be a mystery. So if we use some reasoning based on what we already know we could conclude that this the cousins reacting to the story that was just told. After that Battler tries to prove it was a mystery and tries to solve Yasu's mystery. Using this infomation it wouldn't be hard to reason out that the 2nd games meta scenes are just Yasu and Battler having a debate over Yasu's mystery.

Since we know land was the actual third story instead of banquet I'm going to rule that out... for now. However Ryukishi stated in an interview that land's puzzles were broken up between 4-6 so let's use that information. Perhaps after Battler got done with the story and truly thought about it finally solved the riddle. We could also assume this Vergilius character might be someone like Erika who just washed up on the island. Battler than lays the smack down on this Vergilius character. Later Yasu admits his/her condition to the cousins however the cousins are still all in love with each personality so they have some form of duel, not to the extent of the meta obviously, and George ends up winning.

Meanwhile someone solves the Epitah and decides to kill everyone, let's say Rudolph and Kyrie cause that's an easy one to make. Battler gets called out by Rudolph so Rudolph can try and convince him to join them and gibbly garbably goop happens and Battler ends up running off with Yasu, Eva survives the attack and becomes a scapegoat for whatever reason (Maybe instead of Rudolph and Kyrie it was George and that's why Shannon left him or perhaps this Erikaish character as shown in the 6th game.) Later on Battler writes forgeries and we already know the rest.

You make it sound like the stories contained any of the events of what happened on Prime. That's a fairly baseless assumption, aside from Eva and Battler living.

Not the stories themselves, more of the meta scenes being prime. Your right it is baseless but the Meta scenes were never really explained well at all to begin with and it's impossible to solve most of the story anyways without making a few assumptions here and there. The assumption though I'm mostly making is that when Ryukishi left clues for someone to solve prime if they wanted to. Although this is a bit based on Ryukishi asking the readers in our confession to find the hidden truth on their own.

You make it sound like the stories contained any of the events of what happened on Prime. That's a fairly baseless assumption, aside from Eva and Battler living.

Arguably, even that is a baseless assumption. We see worlds that occur after 1986, but maybe they're all also fiction.

Maybe there's just a guy named Tohya who isn't sure if he's a guy named Battler, or if there was a guy named Battler. Maybe there's not a guy named Tohya. I mean, there wasn't, but I mean maybe there wasn't... in the story. Except there was in the story, so... you know what, screw it, this is getting too weird.

At the very least, "Prime" is nothing more than a construct we readers theorized might exist. I have no idea if it must exist. Hell, I have no idea if Ryukishi even thought about this issue. Although if he had, Chiru might've been more interesting.

I think that is one of the points that goes along with Umineko and is at least what I can draw from it as a creative resource. In terms of riddles you have to know the level of knowledge your opponent possesses in order to create a fair challenge, but reality does not provide fair challenges. That is why I also think that Umineko has a lot more to say about fictionality and literary fairness than commenting on the moral question of these.

In that sense it is largely different from 'An Offering to Nothingness', more on that later though. Ange even says that no matter how many countering truths people create in the end, she will create her own Golden Truth and keep her family with her, she does not condemn the witches in the end, she merely says that she will no longer commit to being their plaything. In the end, she creates as much a 'fantasy' or a fictionalized account of real events as the witches do, only her version is her's and her's alone.

Coming back to fairness. Fiction can be fair, that is correct, but reality will not care for playing fair, providing you with clues and hints. But where "AOtN" flat out denied mystery fiction as a form of entertainment, Umineko goes for the fictionality of everything by claiming that reality is always just a construction from the imperfect knowledge we have of the completeness of existence around us. That is why I enjoyed Chiru just as much as the first four arcs, because it played with that and even took it a step further.

I'll be fine if your reasonement were to apply solely to Ange. Prime is the real world to her but there's no red truth in it and therefore she can doubt of whatever truth she's presented.

Actually, I wouldn't have minded if Umineko had been a story about how truth can't be reached in the real world if it hadn't tried to involve me in a game about finding it and then had refrained from giving me clues. Ironically Ange has more clues than we has at least about Prime as she had read Eva's truth and has likely the official info about the crime and possibly some extra info she might have discovered.

But what seems unfair to me more than not being told what happened in Prime is the gameboard. There are things you can't simply figure out.

Sure, once I know the truth I can build my golden truths over whatever theory I like but that's not really a game between me and Ryukishi as I can't check his answer and he can't check mine unless I don't post them in a place he'll end up seeing (and I don't really think he checks all the Japanese blogs/web/journal/whatever about Umineko).

In short it stops being a game between the two of us and becomes a solitaire only, at this point, I can twist rules so that my answer will work.
Like writing a fanfic about a series that had been left unfinished.

Now, I wrote MANY fics about a certain series that had been left unfinished and it can be funny but when I started Umineko I was under the belief it was a complete work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by haguruma

In classic mystery fiction the angle of the legend-motive was used by the culprit to spread suspicion into every possible corner and push attention away from him or herself by using a well-known supernatural narrative. In Umineko it rather seems to be that one person (guilty or not) tried to gather all guilt into him/herself to give life to a supernatural tale that did not exist prior to this.

Undoubtely, as far as I'm involved, Umineko has some very interesting points. There are some things of Umineko I totally love and... there are some other that I don't like and that I find bordering on poor writing.

I guess it has to be expected as Ryukishi isn't one of the world's best writers so he can make mistakes so maybe it's unfair to expect a perfect work from him.

Quote:

Originally Posted by haguruma

In that way I understand why it is often compared to 'AOtN'. You can read this plot synopsis (part of it was taken from a Japanese blog because I didn't remember all specifics) if you want.

Spoiler for An Offering to Nothingness:

In September 1954, a sailing boat, the Urojijimaru, that operated on the Saikan contact route left during the typhoon No.15 and capsized because of the exposure to storm and rain. Crew and Passengers put together, almost 1100 people lost their lives. Among the victims of the Urojijimaru was the family head of the Hinuma family, Murasaki Jiro and his wife, as well as his younger brother Sumire Saburo and his wife. The Hinuma family owned a jewel store in Tokyo, but it was destroyed in the post-war period, so Murasaki Jiro left on this journey to Hokkaido, where he was involved in this accident, because he wanted to discuss opening a new store with his younger brother and his wife.
In the spring of that year a salaryman called Mitsuda Alim becomes friends with the orphan son of Sumire Saburo, Mizunuma Aiji, in a gay bar in Ryusenji called ARABIQ, which he frequents. Alim learns that the chanson loving Aiji is a big fan of his childhood friend and chanson singer Nanamura Hisao, and introduces the two on the year end party at ARABIQ.
Because he immediately hits it off with Hisao, he confesses to her that after the incident he moved to Hokkaido to the main estate and started living together with the orphans of Murasaki Jiro, the brothers Aoji and Benitsukasa in the Hinuma main mansion in Meguro, where recently strange events have started happening around him. Actually Hisao, who is a big fan of reasoning based mystery fiction, received a letter from her fiancé, Mureta Toshio, who had distant relations to the Hinuma household and recently moved to France, telling her, “Because the house of Hinuma has been piling up the bad karma of the dead for generations, before long the god of death will befall it, I beg of you to stop it somehow.” So Hisao asked of Alim, who is an old school friend of Aoji, to stop by the Hinuma mansion and look for clues.
After several days Alim, who visited the Hinuma mansion in Meguro, told her that Murasaki Jiro had two younger brothers and a younger sister. The middle brother is Sumire Saburo. The youngest brother, Tojiro, was a doctor of Chinese medicine but had lost his practice in a fire caused by faulty wiring shortly after the accident of the Urojijimaru, and currently lodges at the main mansion in Meguro. Tojiro’s wife is separated from him by her age, but as she is in her last months of pregnancy she is interned in a maternity clinic. The air between Benitsukasa and Tojiro is also very thick.
Furthermore, the younger sister of Murasaki Jiro, Akemi, left Tokyo and bore an illegitimate child named Kiji while in Hiroshima. Murasaki Jiro had pity on Kiji because of his poor living conditions and entered him into the family like his own child, but Akemi had to suffer under this because she had to share her part of the inheritance with him, which caused her to break off contact with Murasaki Jiro. In the final days of the war, Akemi died due to the bombing of Hiroshima, and it was deemed unknown whether Kiji was dead or alive.

One night, when Alim is visiting the Hinuma mansion, while Aoji is not present due to a consultation with a real estate agent named Hachida Koukichi about their house, he is introduced to an old man named Fujikita Makoto. The old man Fujikita is a friend of their grandfather and something like an advisor to the house of Hinuma, he has been called by Aoji from Niigata to mediate between Benitsukasa and Tojiro.
After the old Fujikita has heard both the opinion of Benitsukasa and Tojiro, Benitsukasa goes to take a bath, while Alim and Fujikita enjoy a game of chess in Benitsukasa’s room on the sencond floor. But suddenly and old servant, Ginsaku, appears and tells that the door to the bathroom is locked and that Benitsukasa doesn’t answer when called. Alim and Fujikita, Aiji and Tojiro, who had all been on the second floor, head downstairs, break open the bathroom door and enter, where they fiend the body of Benitsukasa stretched out, face down on the floor. On his back they find thin swellings, like a red cross, as if he had been whipped…
When Tojiro takes Benitsukasa’s pulse he immediately informs the others that he is dead. Confused and bewildered Aiji and Alim try to contact Kokichi’s office. Aoji quickly returns home. The attending physician, a professor Mineta, hurries to the site and does an autopsy on the corpse. Benitsukasa had had masochistic tendencies since childhood, so the doctor doubts because of the whip marks, if maybe he had enjoyed being whipped for pleasure while in the bath and then suffered a cardiac arrest and died. Aoji lays out in the open that Benitsukasa also had homosexual tendencies and had as a lover a hooligan with no family history.
If they called the police and let them dissect the corpse in such a situation, it might damage the honor of the Hinuma family, so they all agreed to announce Benitsukasa’s death as a sudden death through illness.
But, upon hearing the details from Alim, Hisao concludes that this was a murder that was made to look like an accident. Also, because Aiji and Fujikita are mystery maniacs as well, though inferior to Hisao, though they agreed to pretend it to be a natural death, they doubted if it wasn’t murder. So a few days later the four, Hisao, Aiji, Fujikita and Alim, meet on the second floor of ARABIQ and engage in a battle of reasoning to reveal the culprit and explain the trick.
After the four people have laid out their four reasonings they come to an agreement that old Fujikita’s theory of Tojiro being the culprit of the Benitsukasa murder is the most realistic and reasonable solution. They search for a chance and Fujikita is fired up to make Tojiro confess the truth…

After Benitsukasa’s funeral all the relatives and friends gather in the mansion in Meguro and get distracted by Hisao into enjoying a party of Mahjong. The participants are Aoji, Aiji, Tojiro, Kokichi and Fujikita. Because they are five one can’t play, so they are playing along that rule that after a full round the winner get’s taken out of the game. Fujikita claims that because of the games psychological elements, he will gain evidence on Tojiro being the true culprit, so he requests Alim to note down all the actions of all five people. Alim takes down several pages worth of data, chronicling all actions taken.
However, during the night Tojiro quits the game and retires to his room on the second floor. While the game is being continued among the remaining four, dawn closes in. This is when Kokichi notices the smell of gas and they confirm that the fire in the water-heater for the second floor went out and gas is leaking out. This happened by Kokichi closing the stopcock for the gas when he was brewing some tea in the kitchen during the night, which made the flame go out, and then Alim opening the stopcock again when he was about to brew some tea, which made gas leak out.
However, the smell of gas is also emanating from Tojiro’s room and he does not answer when called. Because the door is locked from the inside, Alim and Kokichi break down the door, which is how they discover that the room is filled by gas emitted from a gas stove and also the dead body of Tojiro on the bed, who has died inhaling poisonous gas while sleeping.
In the light of all information Tojiro likely entered his room on the second floor, after taking his habitual sleeping pills turned on the gas stove because his room was cold, and fell asleep when in got warm. After this, because of the closing and opening of the stopcock in the kitchen, the flame of the stove went out and gas escaped, which led to Tojiro dying of a gas poisoning.
Both Kokichi and Alim had no clue of Tojiro sleeping like a log with a gas stove turned on on the second floor when turning the stopcock, which is why this is no murder, and can only be called an incidental chain of careless actions that led to an unfortunate accident. Still, they left matters to the police, but once they heard all the information and inspected the site, their final verdict was it being an accident as well.
After Tojiro’s funeral, Alim saw Fujikita off when he returned to Niigata, but in the moment before the train departed the old man whispered into his ear.
“This was full-fledged murder. But even Mee can’t judge if this is truly the working of this human world until the end.”

As if replacing Fujikita, Mureta returned from France and set out to find a resolution to the string of incidents that Hisao and Alim had encountered in the Hinuma household.
Aiji noticed that there was originally no gas stove in Tojiro’s room and thus claimed that this was actually not an accident but a case of murder. Benitsukasa’s SM partner’s name was found written in his diary, a hoodlum named Konosu Genji, so he pointed out that this guy might be the culprit, but this was denied by Mureta. The marks on Benitsukasa’s back were actually not lash marks from a whip, but a skin reaction caused by a very special allergy. But, after the incident involving the Urojijimaru, Benitsukasa had a sudden outbreak of this rash on his back, and for him who was under shock due to loosing his parents as well as uncle and aunt on the same day this felt like an unjustified punishment from above, so what was considered to be marks of a whip during SM play was an escape from reality by enduring this state. His big brother Aoji, who knew of this, was the one who judged it to be preferable for his younger brother to be buried in the image of a pervert who is hung up on SM play.
In the light of the truth that Mureta unveiled, they are convinced that Benitsukasa’s death was no murder after all, but really a sudden detah due to illness. This is how the curtain was lowered on the incident in the Hinuma family…or so it seemed.
After this Konosu Genji, the person who had been ruled out as fictitious turns out to exist when it is revealed that, after killing his parents, he attempted to commit suicide by poisoning himself. So it is decided that the case of the Hinuma family is still not closed. So once again Hisao and Alim set out to unveil the treat and arrive at an unexpected one.

After an intense logic battle the culprit reveals himself to be Aoji. Benitsukasa actually did die a natural death, but in a different place. Aoji constructed the locked room scenario around the corpse. He does confess of killing Tojiro though. He murdered him in the room adjoining the kitchen and then brought him to his room to create another locked room. When asked why, he says it was because everybody expected the tragedy of the Hinuma to go on and created “THE HINUMA MURDERS” in a way to create a “human death” for himself and his family. After his father died while drowning he feared nothing more than “dying like a pig, drowned in the sea”, as his father did.
In the end Hisao points to the readers themselves and accuses them of being just as much of a culprit as she herself, Alim and all other people in connection to the case are. The case existed because people had a thirst for tragedy and horror, without people’s curiosity and perverted taste in the bizarre, cases like this would never come into existence.

Thank you a lot for the summary, it was definitely an interesting read and now I really wish this were to be translated in my language...

And yes, it definitely has some common elements with Umineko that would make it an even more interesting reading.

Again, see where Kanon gets staked according to the TIPS? In fact let's look at all the arcs 1-4...He's almost always stabbed in the chest... the heart! Yasu is gouging out his own heart to search for the truth!

Another interesting thing is that in EP4 everyone is killed by a wound in the head, with the exception of Kanon (and Maria).

On my last reading of Alliance's murder-the-five-escapers scene, it really stood out to me that Kanon alone was shot in the chest... and of course that his was the only corpse that wasn't discovered.

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Originally Posted by haguruma

In that way I understand why it is often compared to 'AOtN'. You can read this plot synopsis (part of it was taken from a Japanese blog because I didn't remember all specifics) if you want.

Is there a version of AOtN available in computer text? "理解ちゃん"を使えるなら俺はたぶん読めるけど… 使えないなら読めるのはちょっと…

I see that not much has happened since I was away and seemingly not much has been concluded. You guys are still talking about some of the old mysteries that has plagued us during Umineko's EP releases, and I'm just loving it right now.

Of course, I didn't leave without some theories in thought. I'm still under the notion that the nature of the entire game, in its entirety, is that of a Logic Debate. I figured that the Witch Hunters, Ikuko, Tohya, Ange, and various others were discussing the matter in 1986, thus making up the "Meta" scenes that we see. The actual stories are of course the original Letters and the Forgeries of which we are trying to seek the answer.

Knowing this much, I had to figure out the nature of Red, Blue, and Gold Truths. Red Truths seem to be same in nature as postulates or assumptions that theories are based on. Blue Truths are basically arguments in nature. Gold Truths, however, are something puzzling; sadly, I couldn't figure out anything for them beyond them being opinions of some sort.

With all that out of the way, I could focus on the actual mysteries (which is hard to do since every other scene was Meta or Fantasy).

Basically, I had to get rid of all notions of Colored Truths and just stick to the text much like I would any other mystery. I understand this is a very unorthodox and possibly foolish thing to do but I was actually able to figure alot off of doing so.

What I was able to figure out was that the family did learn of Kinzo's death during the conference. My initial evidence would be the Adults' growing interest in the subject in each episode. There's also considering that the Siblings would keep track over Kinzo's finances (which I think Kyrie had confessed in doing) in order to stay on top of their inheritance and thus have figured out that Krauss was doing something with it.

I also theorize that they knew of Beatrice's existence as well but, first, the family would have to solve the epitaph. After doing so, Beatrice's (or Yasu's) would be introduced to the family not only as Kinzo's illegitimate child but also the new head of the family. The moments where she meets members of the family in the Letters and Forgeries might be a reflection of this. Again, nothing concrete and, as of the moment of formulating this theory, I'm disregarding anything can give it substance.

And, of course, Yasu isn't the killer (in Prime). I believe Battler's words to her at the end of EP8 is confirmation of that.

I'm, of recently, converting to the George Prime Culprit Theory. I must make the distinction that I don't believe he is the culprit of the murders in the Forgeries and Letters, as posited by George Culprit Theory. Rather, he's the culprit in Prime by flipping the switch and detonating the bombs. He does fit the bill since Yasu's confessions of being Shannon and Kanon as well as the head of the family would possibly make him snap.

I figured this from postulating that the culprit must not care for the gold neither his own family nor the servants. Under these conditions, no one would fit the bill. However, assuming that Yasu came out with the truth, the two people who would be most affected by it would George and Jessica. George seems to be the most likely to go crazy from it due to his dedication towards their relationship. I don't mean to pull a Kinzo pun here, but I wouldn't put it past George to go crazy due to heartbreak.

Now, if someone wouldn't mind putting up anything that would go against or for this. I did do this disregarding Red Truths, so I'm not sure whether any of this is even remotely close to right.

Well, it's possible, but so's anything else. Such is the nature of a cat box.

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Gold Truths, however, are something puzzling; sadly, I couldn't figure out anything for them beyond them being opinions of some sort.

That's easy; gold truths are a "consensus" as Ange says in EP8 - something accepted by the majority regardless of whether it's actually true or not. Even though there's not anything to actually prove it, one still has to use it as a foundation for reasoning, because most people won't accept your reasoning if it goes against the established consensus. For example, you could say that things such as the Shkanontrice theory or the existence of a Rokkenjima-Prime is a golden truth for most of the Umineko fanbase. It's not been confirmed in red, but we probably wouldn't be able to take a theory seriously if it denied one of these premises, so they are a foundation upon which reasoning is built even though they haven't been objectively established.

Well, it's possible, but so's anything else. Such is the nature of a cat box.

That's easy; gold truths are a "consensus" as Ange says in EP8 - something accepted by the majority regardless of whether it's actually true or not. Even though there's not anything to actually prove it, one still has to use it as a foundation for reasoning, because most people won't accept your reasoning if it goes against the established consensus. For example, you could say that things such as the Shkanontrice theory or the existence of a Rokkenjima-Prime is a golden truth for most of the Umineko fanbase. It's not been confirmed in red, but we probably wouldn't be able to take a theory seriously if it denied one of these premises, so they are a foundation upon which reasoning is built even though they haven't been objectively established.

I wouldn't say the golden truth is consensus.
Didn't Ange use it to affirm Battler was still alive? I doubt the consensus was he was, expecially since Bern had just declared him dead in red.

Beato the elder used gold also to say that what MoeBeato did was magic and we know Erika would have declared it a trick (actually she had explained in that same episode how that trick worked)

Gold seems more personal belief, which can match with the red truth or not, which can be shaked by an opposing red truth or stay firm.

Interesting enough I like to link blue and gold truth to Bern and Lambda.
To turn true the blue truth you might have to go through tons of possibilities, which is what Bern does when she search for words for her miracle.
Interesting enough this reminds me of when Battler compared the blue truth to a machine gun and began tossing them one after the other.
For the gold truth to be true for the person that uses it, you need determination, a certain will, which is what Lambda rewards. And, if your determination is strong enough, your gold truth for you is surely true even if the red truth says the contrary.

It gets worse when you try to fit Will's usage of it during his denouement. Its either a straight lie, or people were convincing themselves, despite evidence against it, of a particular truth.

I dont think its a straight up lie, if it was then he'd be parroting the illusion line. If people seem to be convincing themselves under duress it seems to defeat the intent of it being good and golden. But who knows whats good anymore? Hiding the culprit seems to be morally a good thing in this story.

I don't think it's a consensus or faith, in that the people creating it don't have to believe it. We know for a fact that the accomplices in Our Confession don't believe it because they have to be coerced into participating in it. Hell, Beatrice doesn't seem to believe it. The importance of the golden truth is more who it's being presented to than who is creating it. I presume this is part of the reason it's described as sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker.

To a person who is inclined to prefer to believe the golden truth or who doesn't know better, it is superior. To a person who won't accept it or who has definitive evidence or knowledge to the contrary, it is inferior. Likewise in a situation where everyone believes it, having all the truth in the world to counter it won't have any effect. In encompasses lying, faith, and consensus, but isn't any one of those things unto itself.

And I think it's clearly implied by the Chick/Elder Beatrice dialogue that they both know that Erika's explanation of the trick is correct, but because they are the only two people who saw it happen, they are free to agree that it was magic and nobody can say otherwise (they can explain a trick that works very much like it, but they can't prove that trick was actually employed because they didn't see it done).

I feel like it's something that's thought to be true. Really the Gold truth is needlessly ambiguous. Maybe if it was used more than 2 times it would actually matter but it really doesn't matter what it means.

No one actually died on Rokkenjima in 1986! Everything is a game being played by the cousins.

Valkama pointed it out:

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Looking at the Episode 1 tea party the cousins are talking about, what a shame looks like it's a fantasy story when I thought it would be a mystery. So if we use some reasoning based on what we already know we could conclude that this the cousins reacting to the story that was just told. After that Battler tries to prove it was a mystery and tries to solve Yasu's mystery. Using this infomation it wouldn't be hard to reason out that the 2nd games meta scenes are just Yasu and Battler having a debate over Yasu's mystery.

That tea party was a framing device, and you see a glimpse of Prime.

Here's how it happened:

Yasu was so elated over the fact that Battler would be arriving to the conference that year. She wanted to be sure that he would remember her promise. She wanted to make him remember the relationship they had. So she staged a murder mystery game.

Not a game like "let's all bribe everyone to pretend that they are dead, but then I'll actually kill them if he doesn't get the answer right," but rather: "Battler, let's sit down. I have a riddle I want to read to you."

She wrote up these three "letters" and framed them as messages from a different kakera.
Because Battler was denying Beatrice, Yasu was getting upset... the end of that first tea party was Yasu reminding Battler that she does have the "power"to kill everyone... even if it is only on paper.

However, Yasu misplaced Land and so it was "lost." Battler realized that he did in fact, forgot Yasu's promise. He could only remember bits and pieces from six years ago. However, he was able to arrive at the truth in Yasu's stories, so he took his turn. This time, instead of being message bottles from the event, he framed his as being written from himself: the amnesiac, as a joke to the fact that he had forgotten his promise to Yasu.

So now it's Battler's turn. Ange was actually there, and he felt bad because while all the other cousins were kind of enjoying hearing about the fantastic ways and their heroic efforts to save the ones they loved, Ange was left out. Battler, being the loving brother he was, wanted her to participate.

I'm actually a little confused as to why Battler gave her such a strange role. Bern telling Ange that since she was not there, she could not be placed on the gameboard in EP4, but then in EP8, Battler was able to place on her on the gameboard.

I believe that this was at first Battler and the rest trying to get Ange happy by having her "participate" but at the same time have her out of their way. I'm guilty of doing very similar stuff with my little sister: I used to give her a remote control that wasn't hooked up and told her that she was playing. She ate that up.

Once Battler's turn came up though, it wasn't really his game against Yasu anymore, but rather the others. Have you noticed that Bern and Lambda take bigger roles in Tohya's games versus Yasu's? Perhaps they're the other players who were there that night...

Erika was a representation of the fact that the other players hadn't completely understood the rules, or even the point Yasu was trying to make to Battler. Battler was enjoying his time with Yasu, but wasn't enjoying the company of the others. That is how the main character of his favorite novel became the villain: she was a representation of people from outside who weren't understanding them. Geez, they're a couple now. Give them some privacy!

However, George and Jessica weren't happy with having their own mothers appearing to be as culprits. They kept trying to twist everything around and turn it into Kyrie and Rudolf culprit theory.

Ange has an overactive imagination as a child. She's hearing all of this going on, reading through the "forgeries" and imagining that these really are things that are going to happen that night. What then will happen to her in the future? Surely she will have to live with her grandparents with the Sumaderas. But if Eva survived, surely she would live with her instead. But look, she's Beatrice, right? She's bad. And all her grandparents talk about is money anyway, so if there's all this gold that Eva is going to give to her! But now they're talking that her own parents are bad!

Ange is really scared. She can't tell the difference between the game and reality. And so Battler tries writing up a game that's neither happy nor painful. But this proves difficult because he's still technically playing with Yasu, and now George and Jessica keep trying to create their own games, and all Battler and Yasu want is to be alone together. They completely destroyed the meaning of Yasu's Beatrice in their forgeries, and that is why there is this theme in EP8 about letting the catbox remain closed. Battler tries teaching Ange a lesson about "truth is what you make it or something" and she can either learn to accept it and let the box remain close (and return home from the conference knowing that the possibility could exist that her parents aren't the culprit) or she could continue on living in fear for the next day wondering if she was actually going to die like in the forgeries.

And that is what Umineko is. Renall is right when he says that one can't even tell if Tohya and Ange of 1998 are Prime are not, and that we don't even know if Battler and EVa really survived. This basically states that Battler and Eva did survive, but only because there was nothing dangerous or lethal to kill them. Nothing happened, except all the cousins had gathered and they all were able to laugh together.

I feel like it's something that's thought to be true. Really the Gold truth is needlessly ambiguous. Maybe if it was used more than 2 times it would actually matter but it really doesn't matter what it means.